snpmurray's Full Review: Tom Lacalamita and Glenna Vance - Slow Cookers for...
Amongst my arsenal of slow cooker recipes and books this dummies book was the first and most important. It taught me to make the most of this inexpensive amazing gadget from the very start.
The authors have credits to their name in both the field of house wares and recipe development. Tom Lacalamita has been nominated for the James Beard cookbook award, and appeared on many television and radio shows as resident expert on kitchen gadgets. Glenna Vance directs consumer affairs for an ingredient company, and is a board member of her state Food and Wine Institute. Her interest is in developing recipes which complement particular major appliances, and thus we find her involvement here.
As with all dummies books, the layout of this book is logical and progresses from the I know nothing stage to the last page in a sensible fashion. This is a particularly easy set of books to set out, as the authors can comfortably assume the average reader is a complete novice. No failure on that front here.
Introducing you to the basics
The first fifty pages of this guide are devoted to introducing the reader to the slow cooker. The bottom line really is that slow cookers cook slowly with low heat and low evaporation. Cheap tough cuts of meat are transformed into succulent delicious flavorsome treats, and soups and stews burst with flavor. All of this with mind bogglingly minimal preparation, and no need to watch it. Also it uses less power than a 75 watt light bulb.
Here we are told how the cooker works, how it evolved, and encouraged to understand just how prevalent their use is at all levels of culinary expertise. We are shown with exploded line diagrams how the true slow cooker (or crock pot in my house) is constructed, and made to understand the important differences between a true slow cooker and other devices, such as roasters, which merely cook slowly.
The available range of features and styles is laid out for us, all of this in the interest of our buying the right slow cooker for our needs, present and future.
Slow cookers, again adorably, are inexpensive. For a device that will make a meal a day, every day, in quantities sufficient for a family of six and for almost no energy cost using cheap ingredients, you would have trouble paying more than fifty bucks for even the flashiest model. They last for at least twenty years.
Slow cook THIS!
Okay, so now you have a slow cooker on your counter, you have had you fill of inhaling the new gadget smell from the box and you want to cook. The middle section of this guide has most everything you need.
This section begins from the ownership get go.how to clean your slow cooker before first use is even included. A page of tips tells how to maintain and care for your slow cooker. Another gives tips on preparing to use, and such tips as using oil to coat the cooker to aid easy clean up for example, if you dont have a non-stick (get a non-stick!)
The issue of not removing the lid (it lets the heat out and messes up the whole cooking process) is tackled in detail here, and then reiterated at timely intervals throughout the book.
Most all of a beginners questions are answered here. Should I stir? How do I know when it is done? Can I reheat? How do I clean this thing??
Food safety is also addressed in this section. A handy table indicates the required slow cooker cooking times required for a large range of foods, for when you start coming up with your own recipes.
If you have previously been a devotee of the high energy, high cost, labor intensive, sweat-inducing device known ubiquitously as ovens you may be wondering how many of your hard-won secret recipes will translate into your new enlightened state of slow cooker usage. The fifth chapter in this book takes pains to help you understand what works and what doesnt, and contains tables to help you translate cooking times. Generally speaking, cut the big vegetables up, reduce the amount of liquid, avoid dairy or fish, or if you must use them, add them toward the end of cooking.
There follows some recipes for adapted kitchen favorites. The recipe for normal kitchen, and the recipe for slow cooker are presented on adjacent pages to help the learner get the hang of translations.
This book recognizes that while you may be new to slow cookers, you may be no stranger to the kitchen!
What follows from this point to nearly the end of the book are the recipes. Slow cooker recipes tend to be fairly straightforward things ..by the nature of the beast, there tends to be less preparation involved in dishes that would do well in a slow cooker.
The authors threw in a few illustrated doodads on this or other cooking technique, but none of them are really at all specifically relevant to slow cooker cooking. One shows how to peel garlic. Another how to prepare an artichoke. Interesting, but irrelevant.
The recipes are divided into the following sections:
Snacks dips and beverages
Soups, chowders and chili
Stews
Roasts
Casseroles
Desserts and Jams
Master meat sauce recipes
Master roast turkey breast recipes
Master chicken broth recipes
The master recipes noted above have you first prepare the basic sauce or dish and then use this stuff in preparation of the recipes.
Call me lazy, but does that sound like double duty to anyone?
No, actually the sauces are well worthwhile, and of course with your handy slow cooker you can prepare them in gigantic quantities.
There is one small thing I think detracts from this book a little, and that is the absence of a dedicated section for vegetarians. Veggie recipes are proportionally poorly represented in this guide, perhaps giving the vegetarian newcomer the belief that crock pots are not so hot after all. Nothing could be further from the truth. Try the internet for slews of veggie dishes for slow cooker.
The handy hints and tips at the end. A dummies specialty
Like all dummies guides this book concludes with a helpful collection of hints tips and further resources. This includes dishes specifically suited to particularly holidays (including thanksgiving. Boy am I topical or what?) It also includes a trouble shooting guide for overcooked, undercooked, drowned and other undesirably altered dishes. A list of websites is included, some more general tips and a good index.
With this handy guide, readers learn how to use a slow cooker to make satisfying meals while spending less time in the kitchen. In addition to the 80 ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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